A SILK AND METAL-THREAD PANEL. BURSA, OTTOMAN TURKEY, 17TH CENTURY

Price Realized £20,000 ($32,320)

Estimate £15,000 - £25,000 ($24,090 - $40,150)

Sale Information
Christies SALE 1557 —
ART OF THE ISLAMIC AND INDIAN WORLDS
9 October 2014
London, King Street

Lot Description
A SILK AND METAL-THREAD PANEL
BURSA, OTTOMAN TURKEY, 17TH CENTURY
Of rectangular form, the red velvet ground woven with stepped rows of fleshy palmettes each containing a central flowerhead framed by alternating carnations and tulips, the palmettes each growing from a smaller trefoil issuing two saz leaves filled with flowerheads, between each palmette a spray of three small tulips, whole loom's width, in gilt frame
59½ x 25¼in. (151 x 64cm.)

Lot Notes
According to Nurhan Atasoy this design of repeating serrated palmettes, decorated with a myriad of smaller floral forms, was one of the most popular categories of design among the velvet weavers of Bursa (Nurhan Atasoy, Walter B. Denny, Louise W. Mackie and Hülya Tezcan, Ipek, The Crescent and the Rose, Imperial Ottoman Silks and Velvets, London and Istanbul, 2001, p.314). Occasionally the motif was confined within an ogival lattice, but the free-floating format, like ours, seems to have been preferred. A very similar length, catalogued as first two-thirds of the 17th century is in the Topkapi Palace Museum (inv.no.13/1444). Another, catalogued as first half 17th century and woven into a Russian Orthadox dalmatic (sakkos) is in the Kremlin Armoury Museum in Moscow (inv.no.TK-2293; both published in Atasoy, Denny, Mackie and Tezan, op.cit., nos.338 and 341, pp.415-15). A yastik of similar design, catalogued as circa 1600, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Maryam D. Ekhtiar, Priscilla P. Soucek, Sheila R. Canby and Navina Najat Haidar, Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2011, no.213, p.325).